Australia, with Love and Laughter

Ita Buttrose, journalist, businesswoman, and President of Alzheimer’s Australia, was named Australian of the Year for 2013. Ita reads the New York Times online every day.  Last year she found a slideshow titled The Person, Not the Alzheimer’s  (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/04/23/health/23well-alzheimers-ss.html ).

The piece was created by the NY Times writer Anahad O’Connor who visited my Love, Loss, and Laughter exhibition at Pace University’s Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, hosted in conjunction with publication of my book of the same title.

“We need to bring this exhibit to Australia,” Ita told the Alzheimer’s Australia staff. Wheels turned and a larger plan, placing the exhibit as the centerpiece of their 2013 awareness program, was developed. Clare Thackway was hired as a curator to work with Kayla Morgan and Krystal Craig.  With association members around the country, the team set up a seven-month traveling exhibit, through seven states (see www.exhibition.fightdementia.org.au for details). 

I was asked to come to Melbourne and Sydney in advance of the first presentation to photograph and supplement the already large full set of 84 photos with Australian images. I accepted with delight and spent three weeks there in the latter half of March 2013, photographing, interviewing, and working with Clare to select 22 new photos. These were printed and matted on time to be included with the original set in May in Hobart, Tasmania, where the large exhibit was hosted in a large library in conjunction with Alzheimer’s Australia’s annual conference. 

Originally I thought I would be going back to Australia for the opening of the tour in Hobart. When Ita Buttrose agreed to do the launch in Melbourne, the second stop of the tour, we agreed that I would attend that opening instead.  The venue there was extraordinary; rental of a large well-lit gallery in the center of Federation Square had been arranged, and the sponsoring organizations -- Nutricia Advanced Medical Nutrition and Lilly -- provided wonderful refreshments for the 150 attendees.  Among them were several national and state leaders of Alzheimer’s Australia, researchers, professional and personal care partners, Melbourne civic leaders, a large team of volunteers who would be serving at the site in the coming weeks, and people living with dementia including many of the people who were in the new photographs from my March trip. The photos in this blog post are from that event.

Most exciting of the press contacts was an unofficial request made to Christine Bolt, General Manager, Communications, Alzheimer’s Australia VIC, from a filmmaker, Corinne Maunder. She had learned of the exhibit and the launch and requested a chance to make the exhibit and its message the subject of a short film in honor of her grandmother. Corinne did a long interview with me on site, then filmed at the launch on June 6^th, and then followed up on introductions to the Australians in the new photos by interviewing several of them.  A month later, we received a fantastic film from her, which will be released on September 21^st -- World Alzheimer’s Day --  by Alzheimer’s Disease International and Alzheimer’s Australia. and I LOVE IT and will share it with all of you early that morning. Christine and her associate, Sam Watson, arranged lots of other media coverage.

During the two trips to Australia I also gave several talks, variants of an evolving presentation titled “Arts, Hearts, and Minds: Music Art, and Photography in Dementia Care.”  Initially I spoke at NARI (the National Aging Research Institute), thanks to David Ames and Nicola Lautenschlager.  On the second trip, Kirsten James asked me to repeat that presentation to the Victoria Dementia Network. Trip 2 also gave me the chance to speak at the NSW/ACT Dementia Training Study Centre headed by Richard Fleming, in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Indigenous Health at the University of Wollongong.  At the conclusion of that presentation, Richard and the Dean of the School, Angela Brown, offered me an invitation to return, which I expect to do in March 2014. In addition to giving some more talks, Trip 3 will give me a chance to photograph more intensely at the wonderful Starrett Lodge residential community that I visited, where Colin McDonnell has created an extraordinarily joyous and effective environment for people with dementia.

Several of the new photographs appear in the cover article, “Memories of the Heart,” of the July-August issue of the Australian Journal of Dementia Care. You can click here to view the article.

During the two trips I dined with Henry and Karoline Brodaty, David Ames and Eleanor Flynn, Nicola Lautenschlager, Daniella Greenwood, Heather Hill, Hannah  Baral, Maree Farrow, Andrew Mills, Glenn Rees, photographer Lynton Crabb and his sister Vicki, in addition to the people already mentioned. Apologies to any I forgot to list….

Overall, I can’t say enough about the warmth and hospitality I experienced. I was also greatly impressed with the work being done on all fronts by individual researchers and caregivers and people with memory challenges, but also by the two chapters of Alzheimer’s Australia that I visited — New South Wales and Victoria.  The Australians are clearly in the forefront of providing resources, services, and quality programming in all domains. It was a wonderful experience, and I am grateful to all who made it possible.